Climate Chutzpah

Drudge linked an amusing little ditty today that discusses how the effects of anthropogenic global warming aka climate change aka climate disruption aka climate catastrophe on rainfall turned out wrong. Yet another predictive failure is nothing out of the ordinary in this field, and I would pass it by with a shrug and perhaps a bookmark, were it not for one statement that caught my eye.

Fredrik Ljungqvist of Stockholm University is quoted several times in the article, wherein he acknowledged that they didn’t have a good understanding of the mechanisms that drive changes in precipitation, and that:

It’s therefore very, very hard also to predict (precipitation extremes) with models.

He then had the gall to say:

Do their results invalidate current predictive models? Certainly not.

Certainly not? Perhaps in a narrow, legalistic interpretation of “invalidate,” given that these are models about precipitation rather than temperature. However, it takes a certain audacity to make such a definitive declaration in the face of a major mea culpa regarding other predictive models related to climate.

Of course, anyone who’s making a living from AGW research risks career suicide were to question the irrevocable “truth” of the predictive models, no matter that they’ve gotten the last 20 years substantially wrong. Paraphrasing commenter MartyS:

Have you accepted Anthropogenic Global Warming into your life?

The fanatical devotion to the alarmist models suggests a crossover from scientific inquiry and skepticism to a form of religiousness.

If we combine this with statements by Attorney General Loretta Lynch and others suggesting that climate change “deniers” be prosecuted, we have two of the four weapons that Monty Python’s Spanish Inquisitors use. Unfortunately, while Michael Palin’s Cardinal Ximinez was intended to amuse, the US Attorney General and a sitting US Senator threatening legal action instills fear in those in the public eye who dare raise legitimate questions about a theory that’s increasingly questionable.

Meanwhile, Christiana Figueres, executive secretary of U.N.’s Framework Convention on Climate Change, made a juicy admission about goals associated with global warming policy:

This is the first time in the history of mankind that we are setting ourselves the task of intentionally, within a defined period of time, to change the economic development model that has been reigning for at least 150 years, since the Industrial Revolution.

As the linked editorial notes, that model is capitalism. No matter, of course, that capitalism is not only the producer of all the progress humanity has made in the past 150 years, but is also demonstrably the only economic model that works.

So, we have an insider researcher brashly stating that, despite predictive failures regarding precipitation, we should “certainly not” question the temperature predictive models. And, we have an insider bureaucrat brashly stating that they want to “change” and “transform” the way the world’s economies work.

Thus, I offer a new moniker for the clunky and passe “catastrophic anthropogenic global warming.” Lets just call it Climate Chutzpah.